


Quell your prayers

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Burn Our Horizons [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Padmé Lives, Depression, Grief, Past Relationship(s), Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 10:59:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6851992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been fifteen long years, and she hasn't aged as much as he has.</p>
<p>Leia looks more like her than he realised. Does that mean Luke is even more like Anakin than they thought?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quell your prayers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theMightyPen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theMightyPen/gifts).



"Close your eyes and hold out your hands," Obi-Wan says, giddy to see her after so long, but afraid, too, that this has all been wrong.

“I can’t do that,” Padmé says, face thin with grief. “I can’t trust even you for long enough to close my eyes, Obi-Wan.”

It hurts him, to see her like this - to know that he was part of the cause. But Anakin could never be allowed to know the truth, and if Padmé knew the truth, Anakin would sense the insincerity of her grief, and would know it all for a lie.

So they had to lie to her, too. They had to run, to _flee_  like cowards. For ten long years, they have been hiding beneath notice, hiding on the very fringes of the galaxy, beyond Imperial-formerly-Republic space and into the furthest reaches, such as Obi-Wan had thought never to see again.

Stewjon had changed little from what dim memories he still had, and he had not been sorry to leave it once more.

Padmé’s mouth goes tight, and then soft, and Obi-Wan wonders if leaving her alive and unguarded makes a cruel man of him. He knew that Anakin would look for her, knew that Anakin would _find_ her.

Knew that Anakin would push for her to sit in the Imperial Senate, a mockery of everything she loves and holds dear, a reminder of all that is lost to her. 

“Please, Padmé,” he says gently, stepping a little closer, closer than is appropriate given the formality that has always stifled their relationship, except here, on Naboo. “Just this one moment. That is all I can ask, I know.”

She watches him - so hard that he wonders, as he so often has, if she is not at least aware of the Force, even if she cannot manipulate it, because she always seems to know his thoughts. She could always see him with greater clarity than anyone save, sometimes, Qui-Gonn. 

And then she closes her eyes, quietly, as if part of a negotiation, never a surrender.

Her hands look smaller than he remembers, fingers spindling and tired looking, but he thinks that he has the key to restoring some of her vitality in his keeping.

“I have a gift for you,” he says, “and you will be angry with me, but I swear to you, I did this only to save them.”

Luke’s hand is bigger than Leia’s, as big as Padmé’s, and there is a scar over his knuckles that is not matched on Leia’s hand, because Leia learned quicker than Luke not to try and block a lightsaber with anything but _another_  lightsaber, and Obi-Wan had only just managed to draw away in time to keep from severing Luke’s fingers.

“I will never forgive you for this,” Padmé promises him, enveloped in a pocket of shadow that will keep Anakin from noticing them - Obi-Wan suspects that Anakin trusts in Padmé, at least enough to keep from trailing her with the Force at all times, but it is better to be safe than sorry. “But thank you, Ben. I cannot ever thank you enough.”

Luke looks back to Obi-Wan with Anakin’s eyes, uncertain and maybe a little afraid, but Leia looks forward to Padmé, more like a Queen Obi-Wan once knew than the parentless padawan she has been raised as.

“I had to choose between you and them,” he says, a hand on Leia’s shoulder, a hand on Luke’s. “I don’t think you would have ever forgiven me if I had made any other choice. He would have known, Padmé.”

Her eyes, still closed, are edged now with tears - her heavy eye make-up is softening and starting to run, just a little, and the sudden unleashing of her grief makes the children each cry out in pain. They are unused to such a lack of control, and Obi-Wan thinks it best not to shield them from this. Better they understand just how much their absence has hurt their mother.

“He will know now,” she says, trembling hands lifting and finding Luke’s face (like Anakin’s, Before) and Leia’s (like Padmé’s, Then). There are strange markings tattooed into her arms, like tribal brands or gang tags, and Obi-Wan wonders just what sort of fate he abandoned her to when he stole the twins away and ran. He cannot regret it, cannot afford to do so, but he is sorry for it.

His sorrow is meaningless, and he knows that, but saving the twins might go some way toward atoning for his sins.

“He will know now,” Padmé says, drawing the twins close, away from Obi-Wan, “because you are going to finish what you started fifteen years ago, on Mustafar.”

 

* * *

 

 

Padmé’s thin face and black-banded arms fit in with the sharp black uniforms of the Imperial senate, even if her arms are hidden under long, tightly fitted sleeves and short, straight-falling capes. With her hair tugged back so severely and plainly from her face, she looks older than she is, and Obi-Wan wonders if the added years are grief or madness.

Because she greets the creature Anakin has become with a smile. Obi-Wan watches her do it, hidden behind the Force and durasteel and Anakin’s eternal over-confidence.

“You were missed during the Senate session,” the thing tells her, and Obi-Wan wonders if, maybe, Anakin removes his apparatus to sleep, or to eat. He wonders if he _can_  remove it, if having Padmé so close has been hard because he must know that she hates him, or because she is _so_  close, and yet he cannot even touch her hand with his own.

“I was unwell,” Padmé says easily, not entirely a lie but enough of a lie that Obi-Wan worries. Padmé could always act, but never lie, and he dreads to think what might happen if her act slips and she reveals some part of her aching joy. “But I am better. Have you eaten?”

“With the Emperor,” the thing, _Lord Vader,_ says, words hushing and shushing through his apparatus. “He sends his regards.”

“I’m sure he does,” Padmé returns, voice light. Is that a more terrible pain for her than for anyone else, that a man of her own world could turn the whole galaxy on its head for the sake of power? She was close to Palpatine, once, as close as a daughter to a father, and it must surely hurt her to see everything she loved so distorted by the hands of the two men she loved best. “He is well, I trust?”

They exchange more pleasantries, and Obi-Wan hardly dares to breathe for fear of Anakin sensing his signature in the Force. Worse, he might sense the children, who burn as bright as ever he did, Leia with determination and Luke with hope, where with Anakin it was so often fury. Or maybe he will sense Padmé’s changed state, and it will all fall into disaster.

But he departs as swiftly as he arrived, heavy step echoing on the polished duracrete floor of the entryway, and Obi-Wan waits until the nightmare-cloud of Anakin’s scarred presence is gone beyond his senses before dropping his shields.

“Let me change,” Padmé’s says, hard mouth going soft, “and then we can talk.”

The children fall on the food without being invited, and Obi-Wan is sorry for that, too - not for their lack of manners, but for their hunger. He and Yoda did all they could to ensure that the children never went hungry or sick or wanting, but there was only so much they could do, in truth, and some days brought sparser meals than others.

“Ben,” Leia says around a mouthful of something pinkish-yellow and syrupy, “why are you so frightened?”

“Because there are great evils here,” Obi-Wan says, sitting between them and pointedly slicing into an apple, which slows their attack a little. “And I have too many treasures to lose, padawan.”

“Should she not call you _Master?”_ Padmé’s asks, apparenty sincere in her curiosity, and Obi-Wan’s heart leaps straight into his mouth. With her face cleaned of the make-up, it seems less thin and sharp, and she pulls pins from her hair as she approaches, letting it fall soft around her shoulders. Her dress is the same sky-blue she once favoured, and for a moment, looking at her, he might be in her apartment Before, waiting for Bail and Breha or Mon Mothma to arrive, so they could spend an evening laughing and getting pleasantly drunk.

Before, meaning before the clones, before the War. Before Padmé somehow fell in love with Anakin, and their easy, casual relationship was reduced to polite almost-friendship.

“In more formal times, perhaps,” Obi-Wan says, once Padmé has taken the seat opposite him so she can watch the children with hungry eyes. “But we are hardly a formal Order any longer, Senator. Only two old men with a student apiece.”

He and Yoda share the twins between them, thank the Force, because neither one of them could handle Luke or Leia exclusively for long, and there are more than just the two of them - they have allies scattered all over the galaxy, from the Organas’ Rebellion to the Grey Jedi to the likes of wise old Maz, who refuses them help even while sending them food and medicine and information, so they can escape the Empire just a little while longer.

“One of you is not so old,” Padmé says, smiling a little. “You’re not that awfully much older than I am, Obi-Wan.”

“Over a decade,” he corrects her, earning horrified looks from the twins - to them, he is simply Master Ben, bearded and ageless, and the idea of his actually having an _age_  must be shocking for them. “And looking every day of it, I fear.”

“A friendly face never looks any the worse for wear,” Padmé says, giving him another of those fleeting smiles. “You could look considerably worse, Obi-Wan, I promise you that.”

 

* * *

 

 

The black banding is a secret, she tells him, while the twins are sleeping on soft mats on either side of her bed. 

“It’s branding,” she confides, pushing back her blue sleeves to show the black lines. “It’s... Old Naboo. Older than the Naboo ourselves. Some think it comes from the Elders, since they were probably better able to tolerate the pain of it without going mad.”

“The Elders were reptilian,” Obi-Wan observes mildly, horrified that she has done such a thing as this to herself. “Their physiology would have been a little different, yes.”

“They’re battle markings, Obi-Wan,” she says, letting her soft sleeve fall back once more, covering her to the wrist. The markings end the width of her hand above her wrists, and Obi-Wan wonders if that is because her uniform sleeves end about half that from the base of her thumbs - no one can ever see them, unless she chooses to show them. “Worn by warriors, as far as we can tell from the archives.”

“Ah,” he says, at a loss for words. That Padmé has abandoned her pacifism so completely as to brand warmongering into her skin saddens him, and makes him fearful for what else he and Yoda may have missed, hiding on the fringes of space as they have been all this time. “And you fight?”

“Where do you think the Rebellion gets their intel?” she asks, her face once more thin in the false light. “You have missed a great deal, Obi-Wan. A very great deal.”

“And stolen a great deal more,” he says, filling in what she leaves unspoken. “They have always known of you, Padmé. Yoda and I made sure of it.”

"That will have to do, I suppose,” she sighs, rising fluidly to her feet. “At least, until you finish your business with Anakin.”

Flashes of Anakin’s burning ruins on Mustafar sear themselves over more recent memory of Vader’s suit, and Obi-Wan shudders. Part of him feels that to kill Anakin now would be a mercy, but part of him fears that Anakin may not even be the worst the Emperor has in his collection.

“Sleep well,” he says, and Padmé closes the door behind her without looking back.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s never slept a night in Padmé’s apartment that wasn’t spent in her bed, which makes waking up on her broad, soft sofa all the stranger. 

“It’s so _loud,_ Ben,” Leia complains, unused to all this noise after almost a year spent on Dagobah. Luke laughs at her, as if Tattooine and the half a dozen other Outer Rim worlds they’ve travelled in the same time are much busier.

“It is a city,” he reminds her, swatting Luke’s hand away from his cup without looking - it’s pure habit, at this stage - and smiling. “Come and sit - you’ll feel better able for it after eating.”

“I’ve been living here for most of the last twenty years,” Padmé says, once more in her uniform, once more with tight hair and stark make-up, Lady Vader a cruel reflection that overshadows the hints of Senator Amidala that Obi-Wan can still glimpse under her grief and pain. “You never truly become used to it, but it does become easier to tolerate.”

She ghosts a hand over Leia’s hair, then Luke’s, and swallows hard before taking a seat at the table. 

“Since you are not safe here,” she says, “and cannot ever be safe here, I need you to go to Alderaan. Anakin will look to Naboo if he suspects anything is wrong with me, and he cannot ever know of your survival. Breha will accept you as soon as you give her this.”

_This_  is a delicate piece of jewellery, flimsi-thin silver beaten into the shape of an insect with broad wings, bright with glimmering green stones. Leia and Luke both stare at it, transfixed, until Obi-Wan tucks it away in his robes.

“Alderaan is above suspicion,” Padmé says, smiling as warmly as her uniformed face allows, “because we have spread so many rumours that the Rebellion is based there. No one believes it anymore. You’ll be safe there, and when the war is over... When this is all over, I will bring you home. To Naboo.”

Obi-Wan can see that Padmé has no intention of living long enough to see Naboo again, but it would break the twins’ hearts to know it, so he says nothing.

“The galaxy needs to be free again,” Padmé says, tracing over Luke and Leia’s matching haircuts and unmatched faces with her eyes, then with her fingertips. “And it will be so. I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 

“I’ll kill him,” Obi-Wan whispers, mouth to Padmé’s ear as she hugs him goodbye - a fierce gesture that took him by surprise. “Don’t act without me. You don’t deserve to bear that burden.”

“Good,” Padmé whispers in return. “Because you’re the only one who can, I think.”

She’s wrong, but it would be just as cruel to ask it of Luke or Leia as it is to expect it of Padmé, so Obi-Wan gladly shoulders the weight of what must be done. It’s hardly any burden at all, after fifteen years of carrying Padmé’s grief in his chest.


End file.
